


The Application of Simple Science

by gallifreyburning



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 04:28:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyburning/pseuds/gallifreyburning





	The Application of Simple Science

When it came to the words “I love you,” the Doctor seemed intent on making up for lost time. Maybe it was the fact that he’d never said it in all the years they’d traveled together, or the way their first conversation on Bad Wolf Bay had been cut short, or the time they’d been apart. Maybe it was simply that his single human heart felt too small to hold all his Time Lord emotions and they spilled right out of him. 

Whichever the case, Rose wasn’t sure what to make of it.

At the little hotel in Norway, the morning after the TARDIS vanished and left them here with Jackie, Rose came out of her room to find his door just across the hall was open. The lights were off and he was hunched on the floor with something in his lap, tongue between his teeth in concentration and sonic screwdriver buzzing in one hand. She watched him for a quiet minute, thinking of all the times during the last few years she would’ve given anything to have him here just like this, weighing that against her anger and disappointment and confusion over being abandoned again by the other Doctor. 

He finally looked up from his task. “Plug-in kettle’s broken. They don’t have those little packets of sugar and creamer you like, but I thought if I could get it working, I could brew us a cuppa before Pete’s zeppelin gets here.”

Rose crossed her arms over her chest. “Don’t you usually need your specs for that kind of work?” He didn’t reach for his glasses. It occurred to her that perhaps he didn’t have them, that maybe they’d been in his brown suit.

“I meant what I said, you know.”

“I’m not in the mood for tea, Doctor.”

“No. Not about the tea. The other thing.”

Well. He’d hardly spoken two words to her since the beach, accepting her desire for a separate room without comment and merely nodding at her when she said good night. She knew with perfect clarity what  _other thing_ he meant, cold wind whipping off the ocean, his breath warm in her ear:  _I love you._

“Did you plan it out, the both of you, the way things were going to go?” she asked, goose bumps pricking her from scalp to toes.

He rested his hands on his knees, sonic in one palm, long fingers curled upward in a way that looked particularly helpless. “I told him we had to give you a choice. I told him … I’d stay here, no matter what you decided. Because one universe couldn’t cope with two of us.  _We_ couldn’t cope with two of us.”

“Oh.” Her face burned. Her hands trembled, so she balled them into fists. “You’re not here for me, then. You’re here because of some Time Lord territorial issues.”

His eyes popped open wide and his face grew pale. “No, Rose. That’s not it. Not at all,” he said, words tripping over each other in a rush to get out. “I meant  _all_ of what I said. I’ve got one life, and it’s yours, if you want it. What he and I agreed, about who was going to stay where and giving you a choice, it was for  _your_ sake –”

“The way the conversation went, you call that a  _choice_?” she interrupted.

“I didn’t know he was going to leave like that.”

She stared at him. “Really.”

His gaze faltered. “Welllll, the idea might’ve occurred to me, if I was in his place. Same man, same brain, same thoughts. It  _definitely_ would’ve occurred to me. Actually  _doing_ it, though – I don’t know if I could’ve.”

“Well,” she said, her voice like someone else’s as it came out of her mouth, “he wasn’t the one I was kissing.” It wasn’t forgiveness, exactly – Rose wasn’t up for that yet. She turned around and left to find her mum and wait for their zeppelin back to London.

The Doctor lived at the Tyler mansion for two days before Jackie demanded Rose let him stay at her flat. He wouldn’t accept a position at Torchwood and he’d been occupying his waking hours by tinkering. The washing machine was now shredding clothes (“Improved efficiency, Jackie”), the dishwasher was stripping the finish off the china (“Companies would pay a  _fortune_  to know the secret behind that kind of cleaning power”), and Tony’s toys were all modified in ways the manufacturers had never begun to imagine (“Tony’s clever, Jackie, he’s not going to blast his own hand off”).  

So the Doctor came to stay – which wasn’t really “moving in” in the real sense of the phrase, because when she picked him up, he only had the suit he was wearing, his sonic screwdriver, a razor Pete had given him, and a jar of hair gel that he’d procured from somewhere. He slept on her couch and shared the one bathroom.

When she stepped out of the shower the first morning, room full of steam, she found the fogged mirror covered in painstakingly-drawn circles, elaborate swirls from ceiling to countertop, traced by his fingertips. He’d obviously done it the night before, after his own bath, and left it to evaporate and reappear like invisible ink waiting for the perfect steamy reagent. She recognized her own name – he’d taught her the approximation of  _Rose Tyler_ in Gallifreyan years ago, when his hands and his ears were larger. And the other words she didn’t know, but she could guess.

 _I love you._  

Examining the maze of Time Lord script, Rose wondered about time lines, divergent fates, pasts and futures accessible with the twirl of a time rotor, fixed points in time, and what sorts of promises lay in each circle.

Instead of scrubbing the steam off the mirror, she left the swirls untouched and made do drying her hair without seeing her reflection. And when she took a shower the next day, the words were still there, because he hadn’t scrubbed them off, either. Which explained why he’d nicked himself three times while shaving.

It was a bizarre first few days – all the mundane tasks necessitated by shared living space had seemed so much less domestic onboard the TARDIS. It had to be the lack of alien technology available in her oh-so-terrestrial London flat. Every time he helped her unload the dishwasher (and inevitably put the plates in the silverware drawer) or fumbled around with the vacuum (and accidentally sucked the decorative beads right off the couch pillows), words resounded in her head in a thick northern accent: “Don’t go getting all domestic.”

Then came the morning she woke up to the Doctor making poached eggs for breakfast. First he’d tried sonicing them, which resulted in raw yolk all over the wall. Rose discovered him in the early stages of disassembling the stove to improve its efficiency, and she put a stop to  _that_  before she lost her security deposit for good.

The realist in her knew quite well that having the Doctor in the flat meant losing the security deposit wasn’t a matter of  _if,_ but  _when._ Rose decided that it wouldn’t be this morning, and fetched a pot to fill with water, added a bit of salt, lit the burner, and stood back to wait. He stood beside her and crossed his arms, squinting at the water the way he did when he was puzzling out a particularly difficult problem.

“You know what they say about watched pots,” Rose said.

“How long do you suppose,” he began slowly, as though examining each word for efficiency, “until we know if the pot is going to boil or not?”

She chuckled, looking up at him with a raised eyebrow. “Doctor, it’s simple science. The fire is lit, the heat will make the water boil, yeah?”

He drew a deep breath and pulled his gaze away from the pot. “I love eggs, Rose. Adore them, matter of fact. And  _if_ the water’s going to boil, I’ll wait as long as it takes. I’m good at being patient, me. There was one time on Axrami I spent almost a year in the court of the Axramian Prime, infiltrating their ranks to find out who had kidnapped the heir. Strangely enough – or maybe it wasn’t really strange, come to think of it – it was her own brother. Not because he wanted to steal the throne, but because he was trying to shield her from the difficulties of office. They give them responsibility so early there, when they’re only two years old, and –”

“Doctor,” Rose said. Because he wasn’t really talking about water and eggs and aliens, he was asking her a question.

His lips parted slightly, his brown eyes studying her as though she had words across her face just like he’d written words across her bathroom mirror. He was so tall and so skinny and so  _here,_ right  _here_ in her kitchen, his chucks on her linoleum and his heart in his hands.

“The water will boil,” she said, nudging his arm with her shoulder. “It just needs a chance to warm up, okay?”

He rocked back on his heels and put his hands in his pockets. “And would the watched pot be happier if I was out of the flat, do you think?”

“The watched pot is perfectly happy with you on its couch, Doctor.” She gave him a small smile, slipping her arm around his elbow.

He beamed at her. “Good. Because I adore eggs. Although I might’ve said that already.” He led her over to sit on the aforementioned couch. “Do you remember the eggs we had on Satellite One, before Cassandra the bitchy trampoline turned homicidal? The fried ones with a bit of pepper and Syrillian spice? Ooh, that’s my favorite, Syrillian spice on eggs, we should see if Torchwood has some stored away somewhere. Costs a fortune on the black market …”

~~~~~

Two days later, Rose’s security deposit was lost in the form of a melted microwave and a scorched hole in the living room carpet. The next morning, for the first time since Norway, Rose reported to the Torchwood office. She invited the Doctor along, partially to keep him from burning down the flat while she was gone, and partially because he was acting just as stir-crazy as she felt.

He was all bright curiosity and bubbling enthusiasm, and she didn’t think to question his excitement until he vanished around lunchtime. He’d said something about fetching sandwiches from the commissary, although Rose was certain he was really trying to escape the constant parade of visitors in her office. There were department heads asking for debriefings, psychiatrists urging trauma counseling, and Pete Tyler repeatedly and not-so-subtly trying to lure the Doctor onto payroll.

A sandwich- and Doctor-less hour later, Rose went to the commissary to find him. He was, of course, not there. Rose stood in the hallway, forehead resting against the cool wall, fists clenching and unclenching as she reasoned her way through a short list of places the Doctor would want to explore in the Torchwood building and prioritized them according to the maximum amount of damage he could cause.

 

As casually as possible, trying not to alert anyone that the Doctor was loose and unsupervised in the building, Rose visited R&D, the Artifacts Division, Weapons Management, and Recruitment. Before the afternoon was over, she had touched base in every single department of Torchwood London, from the Director’s office to the janitorial staff. None of them had seen a single pinstripe.

Rose lied through her teeth to Pete, making excuses for the Doctor’s absence, and went back to the flat. She stormed inside with a righteously indignant speech at the ready, blood pounding in her ears and panic eating at her nerves, but the flat was empty.

He wasn’t at Torchwood. He wasn’t at home. She called Jackie, and he wasn’t at the mansion. He didn’t have a mobile, an oversight she was sure as  _hell_  going to rectify first thing in the morning. As soon as she was finished killing him and the shops opened.

She ate cold cereal for supper, weighing the possibility that he’d been taken by someone (or worse, some _thing –_ it wouldn’t be the first time an alien had come around to abduct the Doctor and use him as a battery or something else equally as horrifying) against the likelihood he’d found something to fix and wandered off on his own. Weighing the idea of going out to search for him herself, or calling in Torchwood and getting an army of boots on the ground. Weighing the idea that he was an adult – nine hundred years of survival and managing by himself before she came along – and he’d sort out whatever it was and come back on his own.

_Of course, in those nine hundred years he managed to regenerate nine times._

The cereal bowl broke when Rose tossed it in the sink on her way out the door. She drove around for hours, alternating between fury and wild worry, and finally came back home. As much as she wanted to call her mum for comfort, she couldn’t bring herself to do so. She sat on the couch, bead-less pillow in her lap, and absently rubbed at the simple silver TARDIS key still fastened around her neck by a chain.

At three in the morning, a buzzing sound woke her from a fitful sleep. And it wasn’t just  _any_ buzzing sound, it was the high-pitched noise of a Human-Time Lord meta-crisis trying to break into the flat with his sonic screwdriver.

Rose was off the couch and flinging open the door before the lock clicked. She grabbed him by the lapels and yanked him inside. Taken by surprise, the Doctor offered no resistance, stumbling along with her, his mouth open in shock and his hands fumbling ineffectually at her shoulders.

The words that came out of Rose’s mouth bore no resemblance whatsoever to the carefully-prepared tirade she’d spent hours crafting. “You can’t just  _do_ that, Doctor – wanderin’ off, leaving me to worry – there are  _aliens_ in this universe, too, y’know! Big ones! Bad ones! Ones that might like the taste of you, skinny as you are! You can’t just waltz away without a word and leave, ‘cause I spent  _hours_ driving the streets, wondering if you were dead in an alley somewhere! When you  _leave me_  like that I –”

“Whoa there, Rose.” She meant to throw her arms around him in relief but she was shaking him instead, pushing him, her body trembling with anger and relief and terror all at the same time, and she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe, she was gasping and he was practically carrying her to the couch. He was talking, too, and his words gradually began to make sense in her ears. “…Not leaving you. Didn’t leave. Promise. Wouldn’t do that, all right?  _He_  did that, not me. Not gonna leave, not unless you ask me to. Even then, I’m rubbish at following directions, and I don’t think I’d manage.”

The front of his jacket was balled up in her fists. “I hate you,” she gasped, staring at him with wide eyes, drinking in the sight of his hair (bangs hanging down his forehead, limp from the damp night air), and his eyes (shadowed by dark circles), and his mouth (red and chapped and his bottom lip a bit swollen and –  _oh_ ). “I hate you. Oh god, I hate you.”

“Obviously,” he replied dryly, working her hands loose from his lapels. He sat down, body angled toward her, one leg folded under the other. “We’re going to have to work something out, Rose. I can’t have you plunging into a panic attack every time I leave the room.”

Hot tears brimmed in her vision. “You have to  _tell me,_ Doctor. I lied to Pete, I searched Torchwood from basement to roof, and  _what were you thinking? Where the hell did you go?”_

“Sshh.” It was a gentle, soothing noise, and it smoothed over the panic alarms clamoring in her head. She blinked at him, drawing a shaky breath. Half of her wanted to ask him to make that noise again, the other half just wanted to sit in the stillness that settled in its wake.

“I nicked a few alien supplies from Torchwood and then went to find a suitable nest for the TARDIS coral. It took a while to get her settled, to make sure she had all the nutrients and humidity she needs.”

Rose was properly settling into the stillness now, her panic subsided. The idea of replying occurred to her, but she didn’t bother to try.

“She’s in safe place, and I’m going to have to check on her periodically. That’s all.” The Doctor looked like he wanted to touch Rose, to stroke her face or hair, but his fingers just twitched in his lap. She reached for his hand, held it with her own.

“You shushed me,” Rose managed to say.

“Sorry,” he replied cheekily, because he wasn’t really sorry at all.

“I forgive you. And you’re getting a mobile.”

He made a face. “Naaaah.”

“You’re getting a mobile,” she repeated, still miraculously calm; but this was important, this needed to be emphasized. “First thing in the morning.”

“I’m not going to check in and have a curfew,” he said, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t have before. I’m not going to now. I’m not a toddler who needs looking after. I’m the same man I’ve always been, the one who met you in the basement at Henriks. You have to  _trust me,_ Rose.”

Grabbing his other hand so she clutched them both, squeezing them harder than she should, she said, “The pot’s a bit banged up right now, Doctor. The pot has been through some rough spots, and it’s scratched and dented, and it  _needs_  the fire to have a _mobile_.”

“Riiiiiiiight,” he said with a silent chuckle. “You do realize that if the fire melts or damages the mobile, it will be entirely unintentional. It’s just the nature of the fire and its interaction with electrical gadgets.”

Rose nodded decisively. “First thing in the morning.” And then, from the depths of her throat came an enormous yawn.

“It  _is_ morning,” the Doctor said, drawing her to her feet and leading her into the bedroom. “We’ll get the mobile after brunch, yeah? I’ll phone Torchwood and tell them you won’t be in for a few more days. Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth, deserves a bit more vacation after fulfilling her earth-saving duties. You can help me with the TARDIS instead.”

Yawning again, Rose sat down on the side of the bed without letting go of the Doctor’s hands. He wiggled his fingers out of her grip and kept talking: “I promise not to wander off again. Although if we’re keeping score, I’m winning this little contest. Do you realize how many times you didn’t listen when I told you to stay put? At least a dozen. Maybe two.” He knelt in front of her and took off her trainers one at a time, neatly setting them on the floor.

He leaned forward to draw back the duvet behind her – so very close, face just alongside hers, shoulders almost touching. Before he could pull away, she tipped her head sideways, nuzzling his cheek, his sideburn tickling her lips and stubble rough against her skin. He smelled like outside – earth and sunshine and the barest hint of perspiration.

“Blue isn’t your color,” she breathed into his ear. The Doctor nearly lost his balance and caught himself, hands pressed into the mattress on either side of her hips.

He made a humming noise, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “You prefer brown? Or maybe black leather? I had a scarf, once upon a time. It was quite colorful.”

“Not what I meant.” She reached up to slide the jacket off his shoulders. He drew back to look at her face, brow furrowed even as he obligingly shimmied the jacket onto the floor.

“This half-human body is a bit unruly, all hormones and things I can’t keep a handle on like I used to,” he said, surprisingly breathless. “And what you need right now is sleep, Rose Tyler. A good night’s rest. Some shut-eye. A bit of a—”

“Yes, sleep. Just stay here. M’kay?” Absently, she pulled her arms inside her t-shirt and reached behind her back, unhooking her bra and drawing it out of one sleeve to toss it on the floor. Still otherwise fully clothed, she slipped under the duvet and scooted across the mattress to make room for the Doctor.

Muttering about faulty endocrine systems and frilly lingerie conspiracies, he kicked his shoes under her bed and laid down beside her. She reached for him and he took her in his arms; her leg curled around his and she breathed a deep sigh of relief. This was home – this was nights on the TARDIS even when he didn’t need sleep, but he’d come stay in her room and be with her while she did.

“I’m not going anywhere, y’know,” he said, his one heart beating away under her hand.

“That’s what I said just before we pulled the levers to open the Void at Canary Wharf,” she whispered into his chest.

For a long moment, he was dead quiet. “Rest, Rose. Sshh.” That noise again, like a balm over her nerves, and she meant to give him grief for shushing her a second time, except her eyes closed and she was asleep.

~~~~~

Rose woke up in an otherwise empty bed. This was not panic-inducing, not like the Doctor’s absence yesterday. This was a familiar behavior, one that had started after New New Earth and their second encounter with Cassandra. Once they finished with clones and cat nuns, once they were back onboard the TARDIS, the Doctor came to her bedroom – a novel behavior at the time. Rose had felt relieved by this development; Cassandra’s violation of her mind and body left her more shaken than she wanted to admit, and she was comforted by his presence, holding his hand and leaning on his shoulder.

After listening to two hours of chatter about nebulae and the movement of interstellar dust, she’d fallen asleep in the Doctor’s arms. It became something of a routine, him sitting on the edge of the bathtub in her ensuite while she washed her face and brushed her teeth; stripping off his jacket and button down; and joining her in bed. He always slipped away sometime before she woke – his Time Lord body didn’t need much sleep, so off he’d go to tinker in the depths of the TARDIS and wait for her to finish resting.

At the time she’d thought it must mean something, the fact that he spent hours of his life just being with her while he slept. Of course it had:  _I love you_.

Now, in this half-human incarnation, he  _did_  sleep every night. For how long, she wasn’t certain, but she’d stood in the door of her bedroom on more than one occasion over the last few weeks, watching him on the couch. His head tipped back and mouth open, a bit of drool on his lip, twitching and occasionally calling out in his native language.

This morning, she heard him in the next room, murmuring to himself and occasionally using his sonic screwdriver.

If the Doctor was having a go at the stove again, the landlord would probably evict them.

Rose changed clothes and glanced in the mirror, running fingers through her hair to smooth it down and not bothering with makeup. The Doctor always claimed her preferred her without the war paint on, as he called it.

She found him in the living room with her laptop open and the sonic screwdriver suspiciously close by. He looked up at her and smiled, snapping the computer closed with remarkable speed and setting it on the floor, practically sliding it under the couch.

Arching an eyebrow at him, she said, “Ordering a few WMDs from Amazon?”

“This universe doesn’t have Amazon, Rose,” the Doctor replied, his smile shifting into a smirk. “Today’s a good day. I’m not feeling particularly bloody or angry or vengeful at the moment. I’m saving that to pull out at a more appropriate time.”

“The next time my mum tells you to cut your hair,” she suggested as she knelt beside him, fetching the computer from beneath the couch. He scooted over when she nudged his shoulder and she sat beside him, flipping the laptop open. “That would be the appropriate time for blood and anger and revenge.”

“I’m not hacking into any encrypted databases, if that’s what you’re  _really_ worried about. Nothing to do with national secrets or information of a restricted nature, I give you my word.”

“Good.” In spite of his protestations, she found the internet browser history suspiciously empty and three new, unidentifiable icons on her desktop. Rose decided she didn’t want to die on this particular hill. “We’re going to get you your own mobile _and_  laptop this morning. Because when MI-5 or UNIT or the CIA comes knocking at our door, demanding to know why their networks have been breached from this IP address, I need plausible deniability.”

“You’re the Torchwood employee, not me,” he retorted, giving her a cheeky grin. “And after yesterday evening, I was under the distinct impression that you’ve appointed yourself as my keeper. Which means all my activities, including the online ones, fall under your jurisdiction, Agent Tyler.”

“If that’s the case, then tell me somethin’. Last night you said you nicked alien supplies from Torchwood. All our artifacts and acquisitions are under lock and key. How’d you manage to get past security?”

The Doctor sniffed, his attention locking onto something particularly interesting on the bare ceiling. “Found your psychic paper in your desk drawer. Wellllll,  _my_ psychic paper, technically, that you had in your pocket at Canary Wharf.”

“You mean,” Rose said slowly, straightening and turning to look at him, “you pilfered my desk drawers?” He shrugged, waggling his eyebrows – surely he knew how very ridiculous and adorable he looked. Rose rolled her eyes and tried to look stern, but only partially succeeded in suppressing a smile. “Right. Breakfast, lecture about respecting other peoples’ privacy, mobile, laptop, TARDIS. In that order, yeah?”

He was already on his feet. “Yeah.”

They picked up coffee and scones at a bakery across the street. At the electronics shop, the Doctor was phenomenally easy to please. Rose was convinced he’d want something fancy with a touchscreen and the latest connectivity, but he brushed off the shop assistant’s attempts to steer him toward anything of that ilk. He made his way to the trash bins full of used phones at the back of the store, where he pawed through the scratched and hard-used offerings until he came across a five-year-old blue flip-phone. His procedure for finding a laptop was remarkably similar, and he refused the salesman’s attempts to sell him an OS for the computer or a data plan for the phone.

To Rose’s further surprise, the Doctor motioned for her to put away her credit card at the register. He fished deep into his jacket pocket and, after pulling out a ball of rubber bands, a butter knife, two distinctly alien gadgets, and a pillowcase, he procured a wad of £20 notes. He shoved them all at the startled cashier, who took out the appropriate number of bills before handing the spares back to the Doctor.

“Where did you get cash?” Rose asked as soon as they were on the sidewalk and heading toward the tube station.

“Picked up a bit last night,” he replied, surveying his two non-functioning electronic bricks with the same kind of excitement he usually reserved for new and dangerous life forms. Or bananas.

Rose sighed, scrubbing her hands across her face. “Oi, you can’t just go sonicing cash-points when you need money, Doctor. I have a job and a salary, and I refuse to see you go to jail for stealing.”

“Ooh,” he said, pulling on his collar and grimacing. “That makes me sound like a kept man. Am I a kept man, Rose? Is that what I am now?”

“Kept and not ginger,” she retorted. “Of course, if you take the position at Torchwood, you could keep yourself. We could split all the bills down the middle. It’s what people do, when they share a flat.”

“Flatmates.” The Doctor busied himself by slipping the telephone into his pocket, but Rose didn’t miss the question in his voice.

“Flatmates,” Rose agreed as they headed down the steps into the tube station. The Doctor turned his head away, but Rose still saw the frown he directed at the ground. Her chest twinged.  _Flatmates_ was really very unfair.  _Boyfriend and girlfriend_ was so very childish, hardly beginning to encompass the depth of their connection.  _Lovers_ wasn’t quite true, not yet.  _Life mates_ was accurate, because there wouldn’t be anyone else for Rose, not as long as she lived, but the words were so very heavy and terrifying to say aloud. She settled on something more comfortable, instead: “It’s what couples do, when they share a flat.”

“Couple,” he repeated, looking up at her from the corner of his eye. The train came roaring into the station at that moment, grinding to a stop beside them, and they stepped into the nearest packed car.

“So where are we going, Doctor?” Rose asked as the doors hissed closed. He reached up to grab a strap hanging from the ceiling; she reached out to grab him, arms slipping under his jacket and around his waist. Feet planted together, they braced against each other as the train lurched forward.

“Are you trusting me yet?” he asked, tipping his head toward her.

“Yeah,” she replied, staring up into his face – his pupils stayed dilated even as the train emerged from the tunnel onto an elevated track and sunlight flooded through the windows. “Been running things on my own for a while now. I’m gonna need to get in the habit of letting you take the lead sometimes.” She cleared her throat. “But  _only_ sometimes. We’ll split it down the middle. It’s what couples do. When they share a flat.”

He smiled, not his usual wide grin but a small curl of his lips, soft and full of promise. Rose’s fingers splayed against his side and stomach. His skin was warm through his t-shirt, his eyes were full of laughter, and she stared back at him like a deer caught in headlights. Calculating, heart-meltingly brown Time Lord headlights.

Leaning down, he touched the tip of his nose to hers. “Breathe, Rose. I don’t have any extra hands to catch you if you pass out from oxygen starvation.”

~~~~~

In the late afternoon, at the end of an odyssey through the British Rail system, the Doctor and Rose ended up in Harwich, where he stepped into a little shop for groceries. Rose waited outside on the sidewalk, baffled by the idea that the Doctor had hidden the baby TARDIS somewhere in this particular village. When he emerged with a bag-full of food, he hailed a cab, whispered directions to the cabbie, and handed over a wad of bank notes. Thirty minutes later, the cab stopped in the middle of the countryside.

Rose carried the laptop and the Doctor carried the food as they climbed a stone wall and set off across a field, apparently toward the middle of nowhere. The hike felt good, the sunshine warm and relaxing, the sheen of sweat on her skin refreshing. She’d missed this kind of exertion – she’d grown too used to dimension jumps and countdowns and all her waking hours in a lab. Spending the last few weeks huddled in her apartment, hoarding the Doctor all to herself, hadn’t done her much good, either.

“So how come I’m the one who’s having panic attacks and everything, and you’re the one who’s so calm? Being half-human must be … rough.”

The Doctor shrugged, not looking at her, concentrating on the uneven terrain beneath his feet. “Could’ve been worse.”

“Really?”

 

“Could’ve been Jack who touched the jar instead of Donna,” he replied, lifting his left hand and wiggling his fingers.

“Ohhh.” Thoughts swirled in Rose’s head, wild imaginings of a Doctor with Jack Harkness’ libido. He glanced over at her with a smirk on his face, as though he could read her thoughts. Her cheeks burned with blood and she grinned back.

“And the part-human bit, it isn’t as hard to adjust to as you’d imagine. With regeneration, there’s always a chance things’ll go pear-shaped. Exoskeleton, eyestalks, bald head, tentacles, that sort of thing. This isn’t much worse than a pear-shaped regeneration. It’s taking some getting used to, don’t get me wrong. But it’s something every Time Lord has to face the possibility of, at some point.”

“You don’t look pear-shaped to me,” Rose said.

“Mmm. Outside, everything’s as Time Lord-y as can be. Inside, there’s the one heart, faulty endocrine system, no respiratory bypass. Everything’s less efficient, hence the short lifespan.” He rattled off the information as though reading a shopping list, as though the idea of a drastically reduced number of years to live didn’t bother him. But Rose noticed the twitch of muscle at the corner of his eye, the drumming of fingers on his own hip, and knew she’d have to pry out his real feelings on the matter. But not today. “Here we are!”

They stopped at a small glade of trees on the border between two properties. A herd of cows wandered the sloped pasture below their vantage point. The sun came through the trees, dappling the long grass and revealing a few strangely-shaped stones sticking out of the ground at odd angles.

“There’s a small graveyard at the edge of this grove, hundreds of years old,” the Doctor said cheerfully, leading Rose past the gravestones. “Nobody visits anymore, but nobody’s going to cut down the trees out of respect. I put a perception filter around the nursery, but it’s more of a precautionary measure than a necessity, really.”

“Clever.”

“’Course I am!” the Doctor replied, flashing a grin. “She’s just here, nestled between these two trees.”

Rose could see it, but she couldn’t – a hint of machinery and metal, the vaguest humming noise, and a gently glowing bit of rock. Her eyes kept searching for something else, her gaze sliding off to the side as though there was something more interesting just to the right or left of the TARDIS’s nursery.

“Thanks to Donna, it’ll only be five years or so ‘til she’s vortex-worthy. She’ll be small at first – just a console room and living quarters. But she’ll be capable of going anywhere and anywhen.”

“Five years.” Rose took the Doctor’s free hand. “Not so bad. Can you hear her? Like you used to hear the other TARDIS? Will she translate languages and everything?”

“Can’t hear her yet,” he replied. “She’s got to grow a bit. She’ll translate and everything, in due time.”

Propping her chin on his shoulder, she studied his profile. “You miss her. The old TARDIS.”

“Yeah.” His voice was uneven, his brows drawn together. Then, without warning, he jumped away from Rose, dropping her hand and yanking open the grocery bag. “Bollocks!”

“What?” Rose asked, instantly on her guard. She surveyed the trees, the placid meadow beyond, the cows in the distance, looking for any sign of something dangerous. Something alien.

“I forgot the blanket! It said blanket, for a picnic.” He frowned at the grocery bag, as though disappointed at its inability to produce a blanket out of thin air, and whispered again, “Bollocks.”

“Wait a minute,” Rose said, a grin breaking over her face. “ _It said blankets?_ Is that what you were doing this morning with my computer? Researching the proper way to prepare a picnic?”

“Well, me being part-human now, it seemed reasonable to do some research about the more obscure human–” he hesitated, rocking up onto his toes as though he was physically avoiding the word that wanted to come out of his mouth “—rituals.”

“Rituals?” Rose echoed in confusion. The Doctor sat on the ground and acted very occupied with unpacking bottles of juice. Then it dawned on her what he’d just barely managed not to say. “Oh.  _Mating_ rituals, Doctor?”

He mumbled something at the juice and reached for a package of crackers instead.

“Is  _that_  what we’re doing here? Performing mating rituals?” she asked, eyebrows rising.

“There was a green-throated Tammarian war-bird living in this grove when I got here yesterday,” the Doctor practically squeaked. “I had to chase him out – nasty thing. And I don’t say that often. But they lure children to secluded areas and drain their plasma.”

Grinning, Rose sat down and pulled out some cheese, breaking off a chunk and handing it to him before eating a piece herself. “I keep expecting something to jump out from behind one of these trees. A cyberman or a Dalek or a Slitheen or something.”

The Doctor shrugged. “We’re waiting for something, but nothing of that sort. We’ve got a while before the adventure’s scheduled.”

“Oh, our adventure’s on a schedule? Is it another mating ritual?” she teased.

He sighed and lay back in the grass, hands tucked under the back of his head as he frowned at her. “Really, Rose. There’s no need to be childish.”

“Didn’t say I  _minded_  mating rituals, did I?”

“In Vedic India, they performed a horse sacrifice ritual where the king’s wife simulated mating with a horse. Then the king had intercourse with his wife after the horse was sacrificed. It was supposed to symbolize the unification of the sun and earth. I thought you might object to paying for a horse just to slaughter the poor creature, so I settled for the picnic.”

“Are you trying to distract me from the fact that you brought me to a graveyard for a romantic meal?”

“I brought you to the TARDIS’s nursery!” he protested, even as she lay down with him, head propped on his arm. “Try to see things in the proper context, Rose.” With his free hand, he reached over to tuck wisps of hair behind her ear. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes as his long fingers folded across her cheek and stroked downward, caressing the line of her jaw and neck, to the collar of her shirt. His fingers were cool – like she remembered from before, less like his new half-human heat that seemed so strange sometimes. But she wasn’t wondering whether the Doctor was with her now: he  _was_ the Doctor,  _her_ Doctor, whether he had two hearts or one.

His hand stayed on her shoulder, thumb absently rubbing circles over her collarbone. “Tell me about a good day. One here, in this universe. One that didn’t have anything to do with Torchwood or the dimension cannon.”

“Mmm. Before you came? Good days in that time window were in relatively short supply.”

“Yeah,” he said, the smile evident in his voice. “Before.”

The movement of his fingertips on her skin was positively hypnotizing. “When we first arrived, Mum insisted we have supper together at least twice a week. Her and Pete and me, and then later on, Tony. I was in the lab all the time – or jumping dimensions – but she’d come around to the Torchwood building and haul me home, even when I didn’t want to go. It … helped us to become a family, I guess.” She opened her eyes to find him surveying her face. “Years ago, I held Pete as he died on the street, and now I see him every day in the hall at Torchwood and eat at his table on Wednesdays and Saturdays. This universe’s Pete is left-handed, and my dad was right-handed. Pete isn’t my dad, but he is.”

“You don’t even need an alternate universe to make people different – time apart is enough to do the trick.” Still stroking her collarbone, he leaned forward, his face so close she could feel the gentle puff of his breath on her skin. Grass tickled the back of her neck. His body was long and lean, stretched alongside hers.

“Funny, how lost things become found again. And if they’re a little different – doesn’t matter,” she agreed quietly. “Just as long as they’re not lost anymore.”

“Precisely,” he murmured, and his mouth found hers. This kiss was so very different than the one on the beach. Then, they’d been frantic, clinging to each other out of desperation and relief and, if she was being honest, anger. Now, the Doctor’s lips pressed to hers with reverence, gentle and slow. The sensation – her flesh so sensitive, so long without this kind of stimulus – took Rose’s breath away. She was momentarily lost, forgetting to kiss back, everything in her focused on that point of contact. On the warmth of his skin, nose pressed against her cheek and fingers slipping behind her neck.

He pulled away, eyes blinking open, pupils so large they nearly swallowed his brown irises. “We’ve got five years until the TARDIS is full-grown. Five years of life, day after day,” he said hoarsely. “I’ve traveled nearly everywhere and everywhen, but I’ve never had that kind of adventure.”

“I love you too,” Rose said, her head still in a fog and her body buzzing. As though they were still standing on that beach in Norway, as though he’d only just spoken the words to her a moment ago.

A little less gentle this time, a little more blunt with his need, and her tongue touched his lips and his mouth opened, and  _… oh._ She had missed everything about him – his manic enthusiasm, his one suit, his perpetual alien faux-pas – but  _this_ she missed most keenly. He’d never been good with words, chattering all the time but rarely about things that mattered, and his feelings for her were never made more plain than when he touched her. With the stutter of breath, the blush of skin, the taste of sweat and the pounding of blood, he didn’t try to hide or deflect anything. He was here with her, worshiping with hands and lips and body, and the rest of the universe could be on fire and he wouldn’t have given it a second glance.

Except this time, he didn’t pull away with a hail of chatter, distracting her until she fell asleep. This time when she reached for the buttons on his shirt, he pulled at hers, too, until there was flesh against flesh. There was nothing elegant about this moment, but it was perfect all the same. It was him, grass stuck in his hair and need in every line of his body; he was fumbling and nervous and beautiful. It was her knees and back chafed by the bare ground as she gasped incoherent words into his skin. It was them together  _– finally, why had it taken so long to get here_.

The sun set, but Rose didn’t notice until the stars faded from her vision ( _he’d promised to show them to her, once upon a time, and she wondered if this was what he’d meant, even then_ ). She squinted in the darkness, plucking pieces of grass from his hair, and kissed the stubble along his jaw.

“I think we missed the last train home,” she said. “It’s dark, and we’re in the middle of a farm, in the middle of nowhere, without a tent.”

He smiled, eyes sparkling; he looked nearly as satisfied as she felt. “Not to worry. There’s a plan.”

“Someone forgot a blanket.”

“I thought the mating ritual went quite well  _without_ the blanket,” he replied earnestly. “And even if I forgot the blanket, I  _did_ remember to research the mechanics of human intercourse, which seems to have paid off –  _twice_  for you _,_ I might add.”

“I meant that we’re going to get cold! But you – you were watching  _porn_ on my laptop this morning, in addition to researching horse sacrifice mating rituals?” Rose collapsed onto his chest in a fit of giggles, hardly managing to get out her next words: “Doctor, what am I going to do with you?”

“Just wait, Rose,” he said confidently, pulling in a deep breath of the cool night air. “Just wait.”

They got dressed and she waited, to humor him and because it meant cuddling together for warmth. They talked and the Doctor carefully arranged their trash around the TARDIS coral – “Just the nutrients she needs, Rose. The plastic polymers are a bit different than the kind she would’ve been given on Gallifrey, and the atomic structure of the paper’s off because of the genetic difference in Earth trees, but she’ll still grow. We’ll have to have  _lots_ of picnics here in the future.”

Eventually Rose did doze off, but the Doctor woke her some time later: “Rose! Rose, it’s time! Right now! _Run!_ ” He shook her gently and took her by the hand, pulling her to her feet.

Laptop clutched in his other arm, he took off out of the grove, across the field, toward the small country road at a dead run. Rose’s sleepiness was gone in an instant, her instincts taking over. Fingers threaded with the Doctor’s, she took the uneven terrain at a ground-eating pace. This kind of running meant an emergency.

Rose didn’t realize it until the Doctor turned to grin at her, but she was laughing and hooting in excitement. In the distance, a car wound its way along the country road, headlights bobbing in the dark, almost as if it were coming to meet them.

It was a taxi, and it pulled to a stop just as they breached the stone wall and tumbled onto the side of the road in a heap, laughing and breathless. The driver’s window rolled down and he surveyed them as though they were a pair of drunken teenagers.

His gaze settled on the Doctor. “Well, you said two in the mornin’ and I figured I’d never see you again, out here in the back end o’ nowhere. You two been tipping cows this whole time? What’s there to do in  _this_ godforsaken spot?”

“Tipping cows?” the Doctor asked with sudden, focused interest, his eyebrows rising perkily.

“You’re here for us?” Rose said at the same time.

“He paid me fifty pounds to be here at two in the morning, promised another hundred extra if I’d take you home,” the cabbie said, gesturing toward the Doctor. “Not the weirdest thing I’ve done for an expensive fare, if I’m bein’ honest.” He squinted at them, his face stern. “But I won’t have any indecency in the back o’ my cab – so long as we’re clear about that, I’ll take you wherever you need to go.”

“Rose Tyler,” the Doctor said, taking Rose’s hand and opening the back door of the cab for her. His grin couldn’t be contained. “It’s two in the morning, and we’re on a streetcorner – welllllll, close enough. Will you catch a ride home with me?”

“Every time, Doctor,” she replied, popping onto her toes to kiss him before she climbed in. 


End file.
